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STOCKHOLM SUICIDE BOMBING

TAIMOUR ABDULWAHAB

Stockholm bomber’s widow arrested in UK

A 28-year-old woman reported to be the wife of Stockholm suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab was arrested in the UK on Tuesday as part of an ongoing investigation into the attack.

Stockholm bomber's widow arrested in UK

The woman is being held on suspicion of the preparation of terrorist acts, the BBC reports.

According to the AP news agency, the woman is Mona Thwany, Abdulwahab’s widow.

She was arrested on Tuesday in Luton, north of London, the same town where she and Abdulwahab had been living with their three children prior to the attack.

Thwany was questioned at a police station in central London before being released on bond, the BBC reported

“I can confirm that the Metropolitan Police arrested a person yesterday for the preparation of terrorist crimes and that the investigation so far shows that there may be a connection to the terror attack in Stockholm in 2010,” Sara Qvarnström, a spokesperson for Swedish security service Säpo, told the TT news agency.

Abdulwahab, a 29-year-old whose family fled from Iraq to Sweden in 1991, blew up himself and his car in a deserted side-street near Drottninggatan, one of Stockholm’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfares, on December 11th, 2010, injuring two people.

Before the attack, he had lived in Luton, and had graduated with a degree in sports therapy from the city’s university seven years earlier.

In March, a 30-year-old man was arrested in Glasgow, Scotland in connection to the investigation to Abdulwahab and was later charged with with crimes related to using money or property for terrorist purposes and fundraising.

Abdulwahab was carrying a cocktail of explosives and is believed to have mistakenly set off a small explosion that killed him before he could carry out what appears to have been a mission to kill “as many people as possible,” a Swedish prosecutor said days after the attack.

An Islamist website, Shumukh al-Islam, posted a purported will by Abdulwahab which said he was fulfilling a threat by Al-Qaeda in Iraq to attack Sweden.

Shortly before the explosions, Säpo and the TT news agency received an email with audio files in which Abdulwahab is heard telling “all hidden mujahedeen in Europe, and especially in Sweden, it is now the time to fight back.”

Thwany was previous said she was unaware of her husband’s plans.

“He never gave off any clues that he was going to blow himself up,” she said in an interview with the News of the World in early January, adding that she “totally condemns terrorism”.

“I had no knowledge that he could do anything like that. If I had known, I would have stopped him.”

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CSN

Suicide bomber lived off Swedish student aid

Stockholm suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab received more money from the Swedish state than from his terrorist financiers, including a 54,000-kronor ($8,550) payout made after he bled to death in his failed terror bid.

Suicide bomber lived off Swedish student aid

All told, Abdulwahab received nearly 750,000 kronor ($119,000) from the Swedish National Board for Student Aid (Centrala studiestödsnämnden, CSN), the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper reports.

The figure is more than ten times the estimated $8,000 sum cited in a Scottish court’s conviction last year of Nesserdine Menni, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for funding Abdulwahab’s December 2010 attack in Stockholm.

The revelations come from Swedish author Mats Ekman, the author of a book on Iraqi intelligence activities in Sweden during Saddam Hussein’s rule of Iraq.

Ekman examined all of Abdulwahab’s student aid applications and payments, and discovered the Stockholm suicide bomber frequently sent certificates to CSN verifying his coursework.

“I would like to thank CSN and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” Abdulwahab wrote at the end of one of his letters to the agency.

According to Ekman’s research, Abdulwahab first applied for student aid in the late 1990s and used the money he received from the Swedish agency to fund his studies in Luton, England, the place where the Iraqi-born Swede is believed to have became inspired by militant Islamism.

It remains unclear what happened to the 54,000 kronor sent by CSN to Abdulwahab two days after he died in the December 2012 suicide bomb attack in a busy shopping district in central Stockholm.

After Abdulwahab’s death, CSN subsequently wrote off 670,000 kronor of his student loan debt.

Prosecutor Agnetha Hilding Qvarnström continues to investigate the suicide bomb attack but refused to speculate on how much money Abdulwahab may have spent or whether Swedish student aid money may have been used to buy materials used in the bomb attack.

Hilding Qvarnström is expected to present her investigation some time in the spring.

The revelations may also lead to changes in how CSN deals with outstanding debts when someone dies with outstanding dues.

“This has been a real eye-opener for us,” CSN spokesman Klas Elfving told DN, adding that the payment was authorized on December 9th, prior to Abdulwahab’s death.

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